Question: Questions for all candidates in all regions. I would be grateful for an answer this week. In the candidate's opinion, is there a property right in a domain name? Please explain.

Nominee Replies

Winfried Schueller - posted on 2000-09-26 09:32:58 The internet is a global network within its own government. There are no laws or global policies. Due to this there does not exist a global property right everybody can apply to. The borders are still drawn between different nations and every single nation has basically its own laws and justice. Therefore are property rights for domain names a very complicated issue. The first approach on this by ICANN is the UDRP. Andy Mueller-Maguhn - posted on 2000-09-23 16:20:06 Names are a combination of alphanumeric characters. If there has ever been a copyright on alphanumeric characters, it is long over. So a combination of alphanumeric characters canīt be a companies or individuals property in general. There are cultural spaces / entities, where an unique name makes sense. Commercial space has the idea of unique names formed into a model called trade marks etc. But the internetīs name system is not a commercial space, it is a public space (see answer to: Who should own the domain name registry?). Commercial space can be a part, precisely: an extension of the public space. To answer your question: domain names, recognizing trade mark laws should be domain names in an own TLD recognizing trade marks. Iīd prefer a TLD .TM for this - and if trade mark laws are non-global - a secondary level domain .tm. in addition to the CC-TLDīs. Alf Hansen - posted on 2000-09-18 15:52:55 My strong opinion: Trade marks are trade marks, and there are laws applied to them. Domain names are domain names, lables used for a lot of purposes. If you use someone else's trademark on a label trying to sell your product, you probably break the law. When you register a domain name you get no more rights to use this name than you had before. You are just registering a unique name on a label in a hierarchy. If you misuse someone else's trademark, you will be brought to court. Just using a domain name for business purposes, may in some cases after a while establish a new trade mark. I my vew, this is quite simple.